Dyn Is Turning New Hampshire Into A Startup Wonderland

CEO Jeremy Hitchcock and his cofounder, Tom Daly, are both 31, and started this company in their early 20s in their hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire.

Since then, Dyn (pronounced "dine") blossomed into a company employing 170 people serving 4 million users with its domain-name and email services.

Its 2,000 business customers include some of the coolest names in tech—companies like Bitly; Twitter; Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds.

The company finally took its first round of outside funding, $38 million from North Bridge Venture Partners, last fall. Dyn, which has bootstrapped itself so far, didn't need the money, Hitchcock and Daly say, but it will enable the kind of growth that will let them turn their hometown into a real startup community.

Prior to that investment, Dyn's founders and early employees have backed about six other New Hampshire tech startups, Hitchcock says, and Dyn has made four acquisitions.

Employees work in a 30,000-sq. ft. office, formerly an abandoned lumber mill.

We recently toured the office and saw a place stocked with booze, rock-climbing walls, jet simulators, a private gourmet restaurant, and best of all, a stage that hosts rock concerts for the local tech community. It's a startup culture which treats employees as lavishly as any in the Valley.